Editorial: A New Breed of Cop, part 1 of 4

Tuesday

Jul 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMJul 31, 2007 at 10:09 PM

Editorial series about police and the mentally ill.

Dispatchers received a frantic call: A young man holding a large knife to his throat. When police arrived, the mentally ill man lunged at officers. To the horror of those at the scene, he was fatally shot several times.

This synopsis sounds eerily similar to what happened in April to Scott Sheets Jr. of Marshall County. In actuality, it refers to a September 1987 incident in Memphis, Tenn. Like the 23-year-old Sheets, 27-year-old Joseph Robinson was said to be depressed and suicidal. Like Sheets, Robinson was cutting himself with a knife. Like Sheets, Robinson had family hoping police could save their loved one's life.

Like Sheets, Robinson ended up dead.

Both of these stories reflect the worst possible outcome when law enforcement responds to a call involving the mentally ill, a duty that increasingly rests on officers all around the country. In communities as rural as Lacon and as metropolitan as Memphis, police are often the first responders when a dispatcher radios an EDP, or emotionally disturbed person. Such calls vary in severity. It might be a bipolar woman wandering the streets, a schizophrenic screaming at passers-by, a depressed man threatening his life and the lives of others.

It's the unknown that breeds disaster in these interactions. Officers arriving at a scene may not immediately know whether they're dealing with someone with a history of psychological troubles, much less how to confront him or her effectively. An irrational person tends not to obey commands. He may bolt when a cop yells, "Stop!"; she may flail when the handcuffs come out; he may approach police against their orders. It's uncommon, but unfortunately not rare, for injury -- or worse -- to befall the officer or the citizen.

Central Illinoisans know this well.

A few weeks after Sheets was shot by a Marshall County deputy, Brian Pitzer, 32, was killed during a standoff with the Central Illinois Emergency Response Team (CIERT) at his Creve Coeur home. According to his mother, Pitzer was suicidal and depressed. Last December, there was Tyee Miller, a 41-year-old former sheriff's auxiliary volunteer, also armed and suicidal, also fatally shot by CIERT officers in a standoff.

The year 2000 brought two tragedies: Shannon Smith, 27, of Weston, a mentally disabled man shot in the back after failing to pay for $15 in gas; and Eugene Pitchford, 43, a homeless Peoria man with a history of mental problems, who died after police tried to subdue him with pepper spray and nightsticks.

The list goes on. In September 1997, Thomas Keller, 34, was mutilating himself with knives in Peoria's Campustown lot and charged police, who shot him in front of a crowd. A year earlier, Bartonville police killed 40-year-old John Schertz, who was brandishing a pitchfork. These names don't reflect non-fatal encounters, such as the July 2004 shooting of Edwin Keltner. Then 51, the Peorian known as "unstable" by neighbors survived two shots to the chest after he wouldn't drop a pick ax.

Indeed, this region in the past decade has suffered several cases of what some may characterize as "suicide by cop," what others may see as unnecessary violence, and what official investigations almost always conclude is justifiable force. Last week the Marshall County state's attorney ruled that Sheets' shooting was "not only reasonable but absolutely necessary," the exact words Tazewell County State's Attorney Stewart Umholtz used in exonerating police in the Pitzer shooting.

But that's where the parallels between Scott Sheets and Joseph Robinson end.

After Robinson died, Memphis residents wouldn't accept that another fatal encounter between police and a mentally troubled man was "absolutely necessary." The Memphis Police Department wasn't content, either. That force -- in cooperation with medical professionals, experts, family members and the mentally ill themselves -- came up with a program in the late 1980s to improve its response to such calls. Since then, Memphis has realized a sevenfold decrease in officer injuries during these tricky calls. And in the past two decades, police can point to just two fatal shootings of people known to be mentally disturbed -- in a city six times Peoria's size. Its Crisis Intervention Team is hailed as a national model.

Over the next three days, this page will dig into that model and explain how it has helped police departments deal with these situations.

Our goal is not to second-guess police involved in highly combustible situations where split-second decisions must be made, or to conjecture whether any of central Illinois' deaths could have been prevented.

Rather, it is to study whether changes in law enforcement's actions and attitudes could lead to better outcomes, for all involved.

Inarguably, the status quo has resulted in tragedy here. Is that tolerable in central Illinois, as it was not in Memphis? Or could we spare some families, and some officers, great grief by approaching these situations differently?